A couple of days ago, I was emailed by a spacecraft analyst from ESA, working on the Mars Express, Venus Express & Rosetta missions. As most of you will know, ESA have recently taken an interest in Celestia, and have used it to display orbital info on Mars Express, on the big screen at ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany. (That's like ESA's version of NASA's mission control center in Houston).
Also, the Rosetta comet probe is due to launch next Thursday from Kourou in Frech Guiana, on board an Ariane 5 rocket. It's target is comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which it won't reach until May 2014, after three Earth flybys, and one of Mars. (So you have a fair bit of time to work on your pronounciation of the comet's name!
)
Rosetta Firsts:
- First landing on a comet (Rosetta carries a small lander called Philae)
- First spacecraft to orbit a comet
- First use of Mars in a gravity assist trajectory (This is an EMEEGA trajectory!)
- Furthest use of solar panels from the Sun (5.33AU), in 2011-12, during...
- The longest hibernation time of a fully functioning spacecraft, which hasn't yet reached it's primary target (2.5 years)
Apparently people involved in the missions, but who are outside the NAV team, didn't have much access to the navigation software, and were looking for some free program which could help them see what exactly their craft was doing. Celestia was the solution to the problem! ESA may be interested in creating a website just for Celestia, and putting trajectories and models of various craft up for download on there. Since the website isn't available yet however, i've been asked to put a couple of things on my website for Celestia users to download.
The first of these is an xyz trajectory for the Rosetta probe! Unfortunately there's no model available at the moment, but hopefully some issues will be cleared up soon, and there will be a model to go along with this too.
You can download this from the bottom of the Solar/Planetary spacecraft page, on my website:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~jackcelestia/
Have a look at a couple of screenshots first...
The full trajectory- 3 Gravity assists from Earth (2005, 2007 and 2009) and one from Mars (2005) are required to put it on the correct course for comet 67P.
Launch from Earth
Mars Gravity Assist
Closing in on Churyumov-Gerasimenko, in ten years time.
Enjoy!!
(And yes, there is more of the same coming soon)
means
...
So, hope this Rosetta (=Pierre de Rosette/Champollion) mission will be a better translator! (I talk about the subtitle(?) of the programm: "D?chiffrer la Pierre de Rosette de l'Univers" ) 